Coca-Cola Co. zeros in on the growing no-calorie market

When consumers tasted Diet Rite cola in 1958, and many puckered up at the bitter aftertaste, it began a half-century quest -- still ongoing -- to produce a diet soda that didn't taste like one.

America since has landed a man on the moon, corralled the laser for medical use and developed the World Wide Web. But formulating the perfect diet soda is still a work in progress -- the latest effort being Coca-Cola Co.'s launch of Coca-Cola Zero.

Diet brands are the fastest-growing segment of the soda market. Last year, diet sodas made up 29 percent of the market, compared with 71 percent for regular-calorie soda, according to Beverage Digest, a trade publication. Sales of diet sodas are going up, while regular soda sales have been slipping -- evidence that there are plenty of loyal diet drinkers, especially women, who like the taste or will tolerate it to save a few calories.

Still, Coca-Cola Zero is carefully avoiding labeling itself as diet. Its marketing is geared to a demographic, such as young people and the most macho men, who see a stigma attached to the word diet.

"We made a point of not calling it diet," said Scott Williamson, a Coca-Cola spokesman. "There are a group of folks out there, primarily young adults, who for a lot of reasons, some taste, some brand personality, won't drink diet sodas. They may not like them because of the taste or stigma attached to the word 'diet.'"

With Zero, Coca-Cola says it has finally been able to create a diet soda that tastes like the classic version of the 109-year-old soda. Like other recent introductions in the diet-soda market, Coke is seizing upon advances in artificial sweeteners that make them taste more and more like sugar. Beverage companies are using new sweeteners, such as Splenda, and better blending sweeteners that already exist. Coca-Cola Zero, for instance, combines aspartame with acesulfame potassium (ace-k).

"You're seeing a wider array of sweetener alternatives," said Gary Hemphill, managing director of Beverage Marketing Corp., a New York research and consulting firm. "There are more good options than there ever have been. Sometimes, the sweeteners work even better in tandem as blends."

Royal Crown Cola's Diet Rite was the sole diet soda on the market for several years until Coca-Cola followed with Tab in 1963. The hot-pink cans suited the era in which it was introduced. Pepsi-Cola introduced its first diet soda in the 1970s.

The first diet sodas were sweetened with a combination of the artificial sweeteners cyclamates and saccharin. The drinks didn't take off as quickly as soda manufacturers hoped, but fast-food hadn't become a mainstay and obesity wasn't yet considered a national concern.

Cyclamates were banned by the Food and Drug Administration for a short time beginning in 1970 because of concerns they caused cancer. Sodamakers turned to saccharin, which consumers complained left an even more bitter aftertaste. Attempts to mix it with sugar didn't satisfy customer complaints. Saccharin was also banned, from 1977 to 1991, because of claims that it was carcinogenic.

The introduction of aspartame in 1982 was a turning point for the industry, because it tasted more like sugar and wasn't burdened by cancer worries.